News 09-25-2001

Save 15% off regular registration for Syllabus fall2001 when you sign up for
early bird registration by September 30th. This year's Boston-area conference
will be held in Danvers, Mass. November 29-December 2. The conference theme,
"Next Steps: Moving forward with Campus IT," covers the most important
issues for the many stakeholders in the IT decision-making process. Key conference
topics include:

CommerceNet, a non-profit consortium promoting the development of global electronic
commerce, last week picked two California universities to host Next Generation
Internet (NGI) Application Centers. To be located at the University of California
at Berkeley and the University of California at San Diego, the Centers will
act as testbeds where California companies can test electronic commerce applications
in an NGI environment. Research will focus on areas including multiparty collaboration,
telemedicine, data mining, and distance learning. President and CEO Mark Resch
says the work will not only have "lasting impact on the (NGI) but also
on the California economy."

A Silcon Valley college has teamed up with a local software developer to fund
a new course in "Simultaneous Product Development" that will use the
software tools supplied by the company. ImpactXoft, Inc., which markets what
it calls "Web-centric digital modeling software," allowing dispersed
teams to collaborate on product development projects, will offer the course
at Cupertino's De Anza College starting in the Winter of 2002. ImpactXoft will
provide an educational grant for software seats for the course. Company evangelist
Steven Young says ImpactXoft shares an educational vision with De Anza College
president Martha Kanter to "involve local educational institutions with
leading-edge technology companies." The alliance is the brainchild of Louis
Lamit, an instructor at the college and CAD program coodinator.

Education Management Corp. said last week it has closed on the purchase of
Miami, Fla.'s International Fine Arts College (IFAC), which offers degrees in
computer animation, graphics design, computer animation, visual arts, and film.
The purchase of the 1,000-student college makes it the 23rd Art Institute now
operated by Education Management. The company said it has graduated more than
125,000 students from career-oriented education programs in the last 35 years.

Harvard Medical School has purchased new a new firewall to secure its eCommons
portal, which helps manage Web traffic among the school's 15,000 faculty and
medical residents. The school picked the RainWall software from Rainfinity Inc.
The firewall detects network failures and shifts traffic from failing to healthy
gateways, and reconfigures itself without disrupting existing connections. Stephen
Martino, director of IT computing and network infrastructure for the medical
school, called the solution "a built-in disaster recovery plan," which
"keeps the firewall cluster up and running regardless of what failure or
outage occurs."

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation last week released a study showing
the majority of technically educated Michigan university students remain in
the state after graduation. In the study, 30,000 high-tech sector graduates
were tracked from 1997 through 2000. Michigan retained 79 percent of graduates
in the life sciences, information technology and engineering sectors, the study
found. The authors of the study recommended the state continue to track graduate
migration and design retention strategies based on pattern shifts, as well as
target students in other states with information about Michigan high tech education
and career opportunities. Glenn Stevens, executive director of the Presidents
Council, State Universities of Michigan, says it was "important that there
be a high degree of cooperation between the universities, state government and
the private sector to attract and retain the best talent in our state because
"nationwide, the competition for graduates in these fields will only intensify."

In another Michigan-based study, researchers found a vast majority of Michigan
high school students rated themselves proficient in using computers. But when
asked about specific applications, only emailing and Web research scored high
marks. According to the statewide survey, conducted by the Ferris State University
Partnership for Career Decision-Making, Ninety-eight percent of the sample rated
themselves "fairly proficient" or "highly proficient" in
using computers and related technology. Ninety-four percent felt they could
use e-mail applications without help and 90 percent felt they could search the
Web without help. By contrast, only 60 percent said they could use a word processing
program to create a newsletter with graphics and text, 66 percent said they
could do common file management tasks, and just 24 percent felt confident in
their troubleshooting skills. Ferris president William Sederberg says, "college
educators need to recognize the skill levels of their incoming students and
be prepared to provide training in basic applications to those who need it."

Sallie Mae last week unveiled a four-week pilot program to test its e-signature
system for speeding the delivery of student loan funds. Among the pilot participants
are: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis; USA Funds, an education
loan guarantor; and two big lenders: Bank One and Chase Manhattan Bank. The
pilot, which will eventually include 15 more schools, will pave the way for
the student loan financer to launch an e-signature capability before the end
of the current academic year. Students will be able to apply for a loan, review
their rights and responsibilities online, and submit their signatures electronically,
without resorting to a personal identification number. Funds will be immediately
transferred to the school after loan approval.

McGraw-Hill last week picked Baltimore-based SM Consulting to develop higher-ed
focused computer simulation software for the publisher. The companies said the
Internet-based simulations to be developed will compliment collegiate-level
course textbooks and foster new levels of "interaction, collaboration and
competition." SM Consulting Inc., is a privately held, information technology
services company with practices in managed services, Web application development,
and network operations support.

Palm Inc. last week introduced the newest version of the Palm m100 series computer,
noting the handheld device was designed particularly to fit the workstyle of
educators and college students. The Palm m125 handheld computer, with a suggested
retail price of $249, features a "dual expansion" architecture that
allows for software upgrades via a new lineup of "content cards,"
as well as hardware modules for add-ons such as collapsible keyboards, digital
cameras and modems. The handheld offers a faster processor -- the Dragonball
VZ 33 MHz - than its predecessors in the m100 family, and includes 8MB of RAM.
The new Palm also comes with five new content cards, including a travel card,
a language translator, and three e-books.

Minneapolis-based Walden University said last week it will offer an online
Ph.D. in public policy and administration this December. John Vinton, chairman
of the management division at Walden, says the new online degree program meets
the current need for "working collaboratively and effectively across organizations,
government levels, sectors, and even national boundaries, which appear to be
collapsing all around us." The school was opened in 1970 and is accredited
by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges
and Schools.

The Princeton Review, the standard test prep company, launched a Web site that
would allow secondary school guidance counselors access to student academic
records online. The company said growing counselor caseloads, currently averaging
over 500 students, are depriving students of the help of counselors in preparing
college applications and making it difficult for counselors to write good recommendations
for students. By using logistical tools on review.com, counselors can get a
snapshot of a student's data, grade point average, standard test scores, the
status of their college applications, and download the counselor piece of college
applications.

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